Andorra legalizes same-sex marriage, joining 18 other European countries in granting full marriage equality to all couples. The country’s Family Code amendments, approved by the General Council on July 21, 2022, went into effect on February 17. Previously, the country had allowed stable unions for gay and lesbian partners in 2005, followed by civil unions in 2014. The updated Family Code also includes regulations for the process of legally changing gender and name for trans people in Andorra.
The push for marriage equality was spearheaded by the Democratic Parliamentary Group’s Carles EnseΓ±at, who called the Family Code “a law for everyone” and “a law of a modern country that ensures the free development of citizenship and bases its success on the most primordial organisational nucleus, the family, with all its diversity.” He also emphasized the importance of ensuring equal rights for trans people, saying that it was “not normal, nor fair, nor dignified” for their rights to be previously absent.
Slovenia, which became the first Eastern European nation to legalize same-sex marriage on February 1, has also recently achieved marriage equality. President NataΕ‘a Pirc Musar called human rights “universal,” and expressed happiness and pride in introducing legislation for same-sex partners. A total of 19 European countries have achieved marriage equality to date, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
